INTERVIEW WITH ANDY DICK

by Hariette Surovell, from COVER Magazine Vol. 12 No. 5.

Andy Dick, the unconventional and irreverent star of television's hit comedy series "Newsradio", will be segueing into movie stardom in the upcoming Don Scardino movie, "Advice from a Caterpillar." Co-starring Cynthia Nixon and John Tenney, "Advice" is a combination of ultra-hip incentuous love triangle and screwball comedy. Dick, who has outed himself as being bi-sexual in the press many times, plays a gay society caterer. I interviewed Andy Dick in his suite at The Essex House Hotel. He arrived an hour late, exhausted from having partied too intensely the evening before with a "bitchy" "Penthouse" Pet, and, now that he's out of re-hab for alcohol and cocaine problems, was compulsively slugging down his new addiction, Arizona Green Tea with Ginseng. Alternately engaging and aloof, Andy (who is as famously moody as he is famously zany) wasn't inclined to discuss his movie in-depth, so I asked him the questions everyone really wants to know about: his relationships on and off the set with Phil Hartman, his "Newsradio" co-star; his reaction to Phil's murder by his wife Brynn; his opinion about the casting of Jon Lovitz to replace Hartman and about the future of "Newsradio"; his feelings about the death of his good friend Chris Farley, and his unusual life-style: he lives with his ex-wife, current girlfriend and all their children...and the occasional male lover.

AD: I just came back from doing this thing for MTV.

HS: In person, you look a lot like Peter Sellers. I read that Peter Sellers is one of your influences, one of your idols.

AD: I have the glasses that he wore which are Calvin Kleins, I bought the exact pair but they were just a little too big for my face. These are a scaled down version because my face is so skinny and I wear my hair down like this.

HS: I thought your parody of "Unzipped" was just brilliant.

AD: Yeah, that really is like a modern-day Peter Sellers--Clouiseau. It was great. I'm good at what I do. I was asked to do Andy Kaufman, but I said no. I'm not good at impersonating. I'm not an impersonator. Jim Carrey was passionate about it, and he brought the right clothes, and the bongoes to the audition, so how can you compete with that?

HS: Can we talk about your new movie?

AD: This is just a sweet movie about cynical people. It's about more people who don't know what they're looking for but they couple up and find love eventually. It's the only thing they offered me when I got out of rehab.

HS: That's quite candid. It would be nice if you started a trend of more honesty, you know?

AD: I think that's happening, and I am, but the way I act is also so infantile, it really is, I'm like a big fat fucking baby. I just need to be spanked and sent to bed early, I'm serious, but no one stops me.

HS: Why don't you get one of those mean-assed personal bodyguards or something?

AD: It's all about me manipulating everyone, it really is it really sucks, I just have to keep myself in check.

HS: Did you read the book about Saturday Night Live, how John Belushi, they actually had this ex- secret service guy 'policing' him?

AD: That's what Chris Farley had too, and that works to a degree, when he was out here hosting at the very last time they wouldn't let me come in his room. I wasn't doing drugs then, and also, during the last few times I was with him I wasn't doing them with him, I was doing them but I wasn't doing them with him and then he was calling me at the hotel once, during that time, late at night, and I didn't return his calls.

HS: You feel guilty about that?

AD: Yeah, not bad because I didn't do anything, but I feel, I feel, I don't feel....guilt is a weird thing to me because I don't have a lot of that but I definitely know that I play the part, however big or small, in the deaths of at least two people.

HS: How so?

AD: I told Phil when I got out of A.A. that I was going to take Brynn to meetings because I knew she was always drunk and I never did it. But you know, I can hear people go, 'no, you didn't have any....no,no,no' but, seriously, you know, we don't know what what difference I could have made because I never made that effort, I didn't make the effort with Chris. Now I try to make efforts, you know, I'm just, the best effort I can do is just stay sober myself. I can at least do that. But I wasn't doing that with Chris. I remember talking to Chris and saying, 'Hey, I don't know how you can do it, I just love getting fucked up.' Seriously, that's bad news. But it's just as bad to say, 'Phil, I'm going to take Brynn soon as I get out' I said, when I was in, he called me in rehab, 'Like, when I get out of here I want to start going to meetings with Brynn.' Instead she's dead. I just never did, I got out of rehab and I got all busy. We're selfish people.

HS: Brynn would not have gone to meetings with you, or she would have gone to one meeting and bailed.

AD: No, you don't know what would have happened, you really can't say. I might, I could have saved a life maybe not. All I'm saying is no matter how big of a part or small of a part I played a part, I was one of the characters in the play called 'The Life and Death of These People' and I should have taken more care of things but shoulda coulda woulda...

HS: Most celebs, or whatever, can go through a whole career and maybe like, a death of someone close to them will happen. How old are you?

AD: 32.

HS: You've already had the deaths of two people...

AD: That should have been me. That's what I think. Sometimes I feel that, what's that phrase? 'But for the Grace of God, there I go.' I've never understood it.

HS: But how does that affect you to have the, already, two deaths, and wasn't Phil Hartman sort of a 'father figure' for you?

AD: Yeah, you know that he was, he was, he was the kindest man...

HS: A fatherly person, right? And he was a real father too, right? I mean he was devoted to those children which is probably why he stayed with Brynn.

AD: Yeah, I wanted to emulate him, his control over his money, the way he did, I'm in debt, I hate that, $150,000 in debt to the IRS right now just figure, I'm just all messed up. He had, he was with his kids, he had this family, everything was ideal but look what happened...so...you know...

HS: Well, what did happen? I mean, do you have any idea?

AD: Just another addiction gone astray.

HS: Do you think he stayed in the marriage for the kids or did he have this...

AD: He loved his wife, he adored his wife.

HS: Was he one of those people who wanted to help, like a 'white knight' complex thing?

AD: No, it's not that way. He loved his kids he just like, he loved this whole package he had going.

HS: Did you emulate him as a father for your own children?

AD: I wanted to be like that but I couldn't and I remember asking him, 'You don't like that I'm not going out with Maria, their mother?' He said, 'No, I don't.' I felt bad because I wanted him to approve.

HS: To me, Jon Lovitz, Phil's replacement on 'Newsradio' is going to detract from your character instead of enhance your character, which Phil did.

AD: We all needed Phil, we all bounced off his hardass asshole character. He was fucked up and that was the best. The show is going to hell, I guarantee you.

HS: How resilient are you, you get out of rehab, I don't know what the timing was but first Chris Farley dies...

AD: That sobered me up for about five months. I just clenched, then went, literally, 'That's it, he died, I'm not...', he actually sobered up, and then, after he had sobered up and was sober for a month, and I went, 'I think I'm going to sober up too.' Then I sobered up, then he died. He fell off the wagon and then died. Fuck! I'm staying sober!

HS: That's like someone stopping smoking after 20 years and then getting cancer, right?

AD: So I sobered up for like, 5 months but with no A.A., no program, no therapy, and I just fell hard off the wagon. It was only a week or three days or... I don't even know how long it was you know how time flies when you're having fun, and that's when I called into Howard Stern and created a national scandal for myself. I was doing lines while I was talking on the phone.

HS: So you fell off the wagon, hard, and like, what were you like at your most extreme obsessive, addictive, ... You get out of rehab and then you fall off the wagon again...

AD: No, I didn't get out of rehab and fall off the wagon, I got out of rehab four months ago and I haven't fallen off the wagon. I've only been in once.

HS:How did you deal with the Phil Hartman thing, I mean, what a trial, after Chris Farley?!

AD: Ever since then I've only had people around me, actually, I don't think I've ever been alone. That's one thing. I've never had any time alone. I've had people....my friend Ryan, my son, my ex-wife, and then ah, friends that I meet here, I've never been alone, that's one.... and those people are all sober.

HS: And they're all nurturing you.

AD: They're nurturing and supportive.

HS: Ok So you're adopted and your family left something to be desired, as you've said... not to put them down they did the best they could, and then you tried to create this extended family with wives....

AD: Unconsciously. All my kids, you know, none of them were planned.

HS: Right, and then Chris Farley must have been one of the most sweetest people on earth...

AD: Ever, his heart was so kind and sweet and lovable and loving.

HS: You can tell the guy didn't have a mean bone in his body... he dies on you, and then...

AD: Dies, I hated the world, I thought, 'This is the world it is really like just, see, I told you this world just fucking sucks! It was really like that, I felt like going 'See, I don't want to be here either! Fucking sucks! Thats how I was, I was angry, I mean, I feel and I still feel that the world in alot of ways, we killed him. The world is so gross! And that's how I feel about Chris and Phil Hartman, another kind, couldn't be a kinder man. It's completely creepy!

HS: OK, so then , Andy, you lose your 'surrogate father', Phil Hartman. What a trauma! How did you cope? I know you said you have people around you but, how can you cope?

AD: I'm not really. I thought I had this anxietious (sic) breathing condition that was after rehab started like I was starting to feel relaxed, Boom! Hit with that I couldn't breathe, I'm still am having..... it's starting to go away again, and always, that would be my reason to go back on smoking pot, I'd get anxiety, it was all nerves, I could tell I was getting tense, and it always calms my nerves, and it always did, I always felt better, I would read these books that said pot is a good thing...did you know that? They have books that say pot is medecinal, they give used to give it to asthma patients. Being a celeb...you lose control because you get taken care of so much, that there's a mili-second in your life that you're not being taken care of, you go, I am supposed to be taken care of, excuse me, do you know who I am? It's called entitlement...you get to this thing where you're entitled to this-I always get this, I'm entitled to this...you're not entitled to anything. It's crazy, I knew it was happening when I was in 'Get Smart' and 'In the Army Now' and I was doing two things, I was going from one set to the other, and I had time to go to like a party once, and when you're standing there, people take you from place to place, you can't even go get your stuff, you're trained to say, 'Can you get my thing from the trailer' because you can't leave the camera, will you get that, will someone bring me some food, I'd like some water now, thank you, thank you, thank you, act, act, act, and it got to the point where I was standing around at a party and someone came up to me holding a drink and i just grabbed it out of his hands, and he said, 'What are you doing, that's my drink?' and I went 'Oh my God, what am I doing?'

HS: Well, it's not as bad as Demi Moore demanding an entire plane for her clothes.

AD: But that's how it starts.

HS: Did anyone ever just smack you?

AD: I smacked myself.

HS: This gets me back to your strange karma, your strange path, because I would say that the path of your life has not been the most conventional, and one that you have followed. So how do you feel about this thing of being adopted, and being lonely as a child, and having an isolated childhood, and then finding your birth mother, and having this extended family, and then finding the surrogate father of your dreams, Phil Hartman, and then losing your father figure in the freakiest death...And for him to die in the most horrible way...

AD: I was a bad boy as a child.

HS: I'm not saying you're responsible, but it was just such a horrible thing, for him to be murdered, and then to have her kill herself with these kids and everything...to lose this father figure that you finally got, and what a father figure...who wouldn't want to be close to someone with such a wonderful spirit as Phil Hartman, and then to lose him, do you think you have some kind of just strange karma?

AD: I have a spiritual advisor I call up, when I just feel lost. Lately, I've been talking to God. I developed this dialogue in rehab, this dialogue with God, and every day I talk to God.

HS: Do you talk to Phil?

AD: Sometimes. I talled to him a lot right after he died, because I read that Tibetan book about how when someone is killed, really harshly, their soul is kind of stuck on the earth saying, 'What's happening?' I was talking out loud, I felt like I was really helping him, that he was really confused, I felt like I was helping him, I was telling him, 'You have to go on...'

HS: I'm sure you did help him. You said in one interview that he was funniest off-camera. How was he funny? What kinds of things did he used to do?

AD: He was so cynical, but he loved life, he'd say, 'This is the money shot', things like that, he loved pretending that it was all about him, the way we all feel, but he'd say it out loud, I got a lot of that from him, 'Watch and learn!' that kind of stuff, I say it all the time now, I really picked up a lot of his stuff. 'Watch and learn!', I said it on the set this week. He was just so...carefree, he was so real, he was authentic, he loved being a celebrity, but yet he loved seeing one, too, just like we all are. Like me, too...I love being one, but I love seeing one, but he was one, and he would come back and say, 'I just hung out with Jim Carrey', he loved to rub it in, to tell me about it, like other people say, 'Andy, you would have loved him', like they are way above him. Fuck that shit, Phil was still a little kid, like I was, he loved his toys, which were airplanes and boats, he was like a little kid, still, and yet he had great responsibility.

HS: You can also see it that you have been priveleged to work with two of the sweetest people who ever lived...

AD: I never really worked with Chris Farley, I hung out with him, but I had plans...I had big plans...movies...and I was in no hurry.

HS: So don't you think you were sort of blessed to have been with these two sweet people?

AD: Yes. That's what you have to focus your attention on, instead of, 'This world sucks, I should die too...it's no fun, they're gone'...now, I'm like, 'Hey, at least I got to learn from them, at least I got to know them.' I felt like there was anarchy, so I felt like I had to do drugs, and I have to drink, and now I feel like you can have anarchy and you can be disciplined, that there is a middle-ground.

HS: So you not only found the perfect father figure but the perfect mentor. For someone who put you on an even keel

AD: He was just great. He always wrote his own checks. I was amazed, I was like, I can't do that. But I also didn't want that. I'd rather have someone writing my checks, paying my bills. But it fucks me all up, because it was--that's what I want, but it didn't work out for him, so it just shows me everything's fine.

HS: What are you like as a father?

AD: With my sons, you know what I'm like? I treat them really rough, because I want to roughen them up.

HS: Why? Because your military dad did that to you?

AD: Maybe that, but also, when I was a kid, I was afraid of other kids. I don't know how my kids are gonna turn out, but I just do the best I can do.

HS: How do feel about having a little girl?

AD: We have a nice connection. Dada is the only word she knows.

HS: It was interesting. I read that people think you're not emotional.

AD: They just think that because of the way I am I'm very hard and that nothing can affect me. That's why I hear this a lot, 'Asshole!' or 'Yeah, you! That's really you!' But they don't really get who I am, which is highly, highly sensitive, and I'm very truthful, and they m isinterpret that as being a cold, callous asshole who isn't affected by anything, but I'm really ultra-affected by things...I feel things deeper, and I cry at the drop of a hat, and offended and sensitive and I'm almost paranoid very easily, and that's who I am.

HS: Now you say, as a kid, you went streaking around the neighborhood, and you're always appearing nude.

AD: It's my instinct, because I really am self-conscious about my body.

HS: Or are you really just an exhibitionist with a license because you're a celebrity.

AD: No, I mean, yes... I don't like my body, it's oddly-proportioned. I'd like to be, like, dumpy.

HS: So why were you running around naked when you were a kid?

AD: That had a lot to do with coming of age and I wanted to see my friends naked. And watch.

HS: So you wanted them to emulate you and start a trend?

AD: Yeah, it was like, will you do it if I do it?

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